Minnow on the Say employs a familiar formula for a children's book—the successful search for a long-buried treasure, with its usual attendant props, the false clues, villain racing to beat the children in their quest, etc. If the book were no more than this it would scarcely be worth writing about but it is however an unusual book in many respects; and it is worth noting that none of the subsequent novels employs such a well-tried device. The main characters—Adam, David and Miss Codling...

Ghost stories, especially those which concentrate on the relationship between a single person and his ghost, as in the work of Philippa Pearce, are anti-fatalist. The person and the event are singular and positive, but they are shadowed by their negatives, which are many—all the people we might have become, and did not; all the things we might have done, and did not. The richness of our lives and being is in the depth of their shading. This perception lies behind the title story of The Shadow Cage, P...

Beneath [the top tune of the plot of The Battle of Bubble and Squeak] are played variations on the themes of family relationships, developing independence in children, the learning of social give-and-take, and the urgency of emotional desires and compulsions. It's not hard to see resemblances between this story and the author's earlier novel A Dog So Small…. A boy's desire for a pet, his distress at not being allowed one, a family living on an ordinary housing estate, an act of e...

[Philippa Pearce's] achievement, wonderful enough in itself, is representative of how (without forsaking the adult note) a truly gifted writer can now write directly for the child, and for the ordinary child, in a way seldom achieved before…. [Minnow on the Say] has the hypnotic craftsmanship of a first class detective story. And as the story winds its fascinating course, the book engages the reader even more deeply in the lovely recreation of a boy's life in a small East Anglian villag...

As a child, I intended to be a writer—a novelist, of course. It's a common dream. The nearest I seemed likely to get, as an adult, was in the job of scriptwriter-producer for the School Broadcasting Department of the BBC. This experience, over thirteen years, must have helped as much as any to make me into a writer of children's books. I wrote for the same public, changing only the medium. (p. 169) In 1951, while I was working for school broadcasting, I contracted tuberculosis. I went i...

The power of imagination and memory to transfigure everyday life, to create a subtle haunting, has always distinguished Philippa Pearce's writing—when Tom entered his midnight garden, he and Hatty experienced each other almost as spirits, traditional ghostly playfellows. So the title of her latest book, The Shadow-Cage and Other Tales of the Supernatural, sounds particularly promising. Her previous and much underrated What the Neighbours Did recreated ordinary events with the intensity of visi...

Philippa Pearce's book of short stories, What the Neighbours Did, confirms her, if confirmation were needed, as the most important writer for children at the present. It is exceptionally finely written and conceived—indeed it is hard to think of another children's book this year that could be considered in the same class. Such high claims must be insisted on partly because the book seems to make none for itself. It is a collection of stories written over a dozen years or so, in consiste...

[In Minnow on the Say] one finds the same devouring awareness of the natural world, the same complexity and maturity of thought …, the same artistry of phrasing, and the same unwillingness to compromise in any of these areas [as in the books of Lucy Boston] because she is writing for children that we find in Lucy Boston's and William Mayne's work. Therefore in her time fantasy [Tom's Midnight Garden] one is not in the least surprised to discover, woven into the firmly plotted mov...

Elm Street in North London, bounded by the stump of a tree at the Park end and by Woodside School (and gimlet-eyed George Crackenthorpe) at the other, to the outward eye a row of terrace houses like any other, is a territory to the children who live there, their cohesion proved by the fact that at school they are known to their peers from other streets as "the Elm Street lot". The six stories that chronicle their adventures [in The Elm Street Lot] were written ten years ago … but at lea...

"In the Middle of the Night," the best story here in Philippa Pearce's ["What the Neighbours Did and Other Stories,"] is very funny…. [It] is as finely structured as music; at the last note, sighing pleasurably, you wish for nothing more: a distinct achievement. On the other hand, some of these stories are often oddly unsatisfactory. The tone varies, of course. Two are first person, some slangy, others formal or detached or both. But all have Miss Pearce's st...

Just as M. R. James lures his readers, word by word and paragraph by paragraph, till they feel the un-ordinariness of the curtains, the sheets on the bed, the dusty old book, so Philippa Pearce leads us—cunningly, with a disarmingly conversational reporting of people's talk and actions—to a state of acceptance [in The Shadow Cage and Other Tales of the Supernatural]. (p. 3113) In many of the stories the supernatural element is skilfully projected from the recognisably ordinary behaviour...

[Minnow on the Say] is captivating from the beginning…. There is a neat balance of hopes and disappointments, and the reader's concern for Adam and his aunt causes him to share their feelings for the shabby old house whose future is threatened with their own, and heightens the suspense. At the same time the aunt's outburst when Adam uproots a prize rose in his mania [to find an Elizabethan treasure] is a welcome reminder that some things matter more than treasures, and the same sense of...

The Hattons of Stanford Hall [in The Children of the House] belong to the privileged classes but life for the children is one of scant food and strict discipline…. [The] Hattons led a strangely tribal life, ceremonial, ingenious and tolerably happy. This life is pieced together in one episode after another. A lucid prose style in which every word counts makes these episodes unsensationally vivid….

The second novels of brilliant beginners are so often disappointing. Miss Pearce's successor to Minnow has now appeared after three years, and her most enthusiastic admirer need have no fear. Here is no second and inferior Minnow, but a book entirely different in every respect except excellence. (p. 333) [Tom's Midnight Garden] is an original treatment of a "time" theme, with a brilliant surprise ending—at least it took one reader completely by surprise.

The successive stages in Sid's attitude to the animals [in The Battle of Bubble and Squeak]—enthusiasm, indifference, a fury of protectiveness, desperate misery—accompany and give point to each chapter of this small, significant domestic drama. There is enough colour and movement in the narrative, enough precise detail of sound, venue and personality, to hold the reader's attention. There is, though, much more. Alice Sparrow's reaction to the gerbils, a necessary guiding l...

[The Children of the House] is a most interesting and unusual experiment in authorship. It is collaboration of a sort but not joint authorship in the normally accepted sense. The foreword informs us that Brian Fairfax-Lucy wrote a story for adults and that what we now have is a re-writing of this story by Philippa Pearce for juniors—a case of ghost-writing in which it is not a matter of "as told to" but "from a story by". From Miss Pearce's pen we expect a book to b...

[A writer of Philippa Pearce's] unmatched integrity can do nothing trivial, and even her slightest book has the Pearce fingerprints all over it. In [The Battle of Bubble and Squeak, a] nice little tale of how two gerbils capture a family's affections and in so doing transform the life of each member, she demonstrates the famous use of language. Each word is weighed, measured and then fitted into place with a craftsman's precision; nothing could be farther from the clichés and the...

[The Children of the House is a] book designed to leave its readers downcast…. [It is] a juvenile book reduction of the Sitwells' dilemma. The fantasy play that [E. Nesbit's] characters indulged in under similar circumstances is absent here…. [The children] never have any real adventures. An epilogue reveals the children's fates: Tom and Hugh killed in World War I; Laura dead from a disease caught while nursing soldiers; Margaret, the sole survivor, living abroad alone. Th...

To use Edward Blishen's invaluable phrase, [the stories in What the Neighbours Did and Other Stories] have "a child's eye at the centre" but they do not reflect an exclusively child-centred world. It is the world of the Barleys, Great and Little, the Cambridgeshire world of Ben Blewitt's grandparents, the scene of the river adventure of Minnow and of Hattie Bartholomew's child hood…. In a sense the story [Still Jim and Silent Jim] celebrates—as they al...

One of the few … books for children which uses an adult and modern open-ended form is the very fine novel by Philippa Pearce and Brian Fairfax-Lucy, The Children of the House…. In this story, the reader shares in the tragic damage caused in the lives of four children by unloving parents, external events—in particular the First World War—and time. The tragic note is sounded in the first sentence of the Epilogue: "No children live in Stanford Hall now." In the last tw...

Miss Pearce has … the storyteller's gift,… the novelist's power to create memorable people and the almost-architectural ability to complete a properly balanced and proportioned work. Tom's Midnight Garden (1958) is as near as any book I know to being perfect in its construction and writing, while satisfying also as fantasy and as a story about people. Only Philippa Pearce could have written it. (p. 246) The book has a profound, mysterious sense of time; it has the beauty o...

[The Shadow Cage and Other Tales of the Supernatural] is not a collection of ghost stories intended to appeal to children of a certain age who, as is well known, like spooky stories. It isn't a way of keeping children quiet for an hour, or a way of persuading them to exercise new-found skills in reading. It isn't designed to make them more understanding, more sensitive or more aware of the world around them. It is not, in short, an educational device. It is literature. Most children must know ...

[The short stories in The Shadow Cage and Other Tales of the Supernatural] are not 'ghost' stories in the usual sense of the word, but something much more spine-chilling and evocative of atmosphere. The author has used ordinary things and places as a springboard for her imagination … and created with them a feeling of the supernatural and a sense of foreboding that makes the reader almost afraid to turn the page. Each story is unexpected in its ending…. The reader is never insult...

So many superlatives have been applied to Philippa Pearce's work that a new book from the Pearce stable is in danger of being treated with undue deference by reviewers. With The Battle of Bubble and Squeak, however, superlatives are definitely in order. Philippa Pearce returns to the theme of a child's intense longing for a pet (first treated in A Dog So Small) and the repercussions that this yearning has within a family….

A Dog So Small is [excellent and unusual], and more…. Miss Pearce, in addition to her command of words, characterisation and setting, is a master in the invention of complex, unexpected and convincing plots….

For all its search and puzzle, ["The Minnow Leads to Treasure" (published in Britain as "Minnow on the Say")] is no one-dimensional mystery yarn. Here are real people…. There is a villain, but his villainy stems from obtuseness rather than cold-blooded wickedness. And the other grown-ups are all rounded characters, each of whom has an essential function in the dénouement. There are drama and old, remembered heartache in the story, but it is as if it had happened &#x...

[The Squirrel Wife] is constructed of fairy-tale components: a protagonist, Jack, an overworked young swineherd; a species of fairymen—the green people; and the motif of kindness rewarded by magic. Paralleling the seal-wife or fox-wife of folklore is Jack's brown-haired, brown-eyed squirrel-wife…. Jack's older brother, jealous of Jack's well-being, caused him to be jailed and lose his squirrel-wife. But a perfectly wrought solution sweetens the tale…. Relayed with t...

We can think of no other [story] which has such an unusual combination of plot, characterization and vivid sense of place [as does "The Minnow Leads to Treasure" (published in Britain as "Minnow on the Say")]. There is a cleverly detailed challenging puzzle. The alert reader is in constant suspense and eager to unravel the clues with the boys. The study of the two heroes, their families and minor characters is perceptive, and dominating the whole book is the wonderful feeling for...

[Philippa Pearce] writes with a hushed expectancy that does not necessarily end in solemnity, but—on many occasions—spills over into humor or into plain realism…. [All the stories in What the Neighbors Did and Other Stories] capture the environmental experiences and the domestic adventures of children living in a present-day English village…. As in the stories of Sara Orne Jewett, the effect of the narratives depends upon the author's powers of observation and sympathy; an...

In this grave and beautiful piece of writing in traditional storyteller's style [The Squirrel Wife], magic rises naturally from the impulses of generous or unkind temperaments, with love and loyalty given full value in the working out of the fortunes of two brothers. Philippa Pearce shows no trace of uneasiness in following the patterns, in rhythm and vocabulary, of the fairy-tale tradition which she is not imitating so much as continuing with complete confidence. Like Hans Andersen, she has put huma...

[A Dog So Small is] most moving…. Philippa Pearce's book is full of truth and truths for all sensitive readers to pick up if they will. She never writes "between the lines" for a grown-up audience. Everything is outspoken. Ben feels deeply, but his emotions are all those that children will recognize. This is not the best of this distinguished writer's books, but it has a fine finish, and like the work of a craftsman seems carefully made to satisfy, firstly, her exacting se...

"The Children of the House" is an elegant piece of writing, sad but at times wryly humorous…. The four children are alive and individual; their exploits, under Tom the heir, those of imaginative, country-loving children. Philippa Pearce has given this chronicle, which is a tragedy in muted tones, shape, form, and meaning. Her sense of period is exact, enhanced by an extraordinary flair for dialogue; her love of fun is much in evidence in this [story]. Mrs. E. D. Moss, �...

Every so often, one finds a book that speaks for its generation—and "The Children of the House" is such a book…. These are the memories of Brian Fairfax-Lucy's childhood—and, as told by Philippa Pearce, they are eloquent. The simplicity, truth, and lack of emphasis in this story are virtually Chekhovian, and it is a stouthearted reader who will not weep.